How the Colonists Planted the Seeds to the American Revolution

📌Category: American Revolution, History, History of the United States
📌Words: 571
📌Pages: 3
📌Published: 18 January 2022

I suppose the British had considerably helped the colonists escape from their grasps, or atleast unintentionally. Although most of the colonists had originally immigrated to America from Britain, though at first not happy with the living standards there. As they began to build upon the land and form colonies, governments, and a sustainable profit, soon they realized how free they were. In the textbook it quotes “As one man bragged to another who stayed in England ‘Here there are no Landlords to rack us with high rents or extorting fines… Here every man may be master of his own labor and land… and if he have nothing but his hands he may set up his trade, and by industry grow rich.’” This showed that although the living standards in the colonies used to be very low, the colonists built it up into something they can brag about against the British.. The Revolutionary War was a war fought between the colonies of America and Britain in 1775. The colonists did have a hand in starting the American Revolution such as acting against the British in the Boston Tea Party and protesting against the Navigation Acts.

The Boston Tea Party was a political and mercantile protest that occured on December 16, 1773, at Griffin’s Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts. This protest was enacted by the Sons of Liberty, who were a group of instigators who used extreme forms of civil disobedience to outrage the British government. The Boston Tea Party was a revolt against the unnecessary taxation of the colonies or “taxation without representation”. The British had been adding additional taxes to goods imported to the colonies to help them repay the debt to other countries from the French and Indian War. In this protest the Sons of Liberty dumped 342 chests of tea that were imported by the British East Indian Company into the harbor of Boston, Massachusetts.

Secondly, the protesting against the Navigation Acts also had a big part in seeding the Revolution. The Navigation Acts attempted to eliminate the Dutch from trading with the colonies. The English would act as intermediaries between the Dutch and colonists. All Dutch goods would first be shipped to England then to the colonies, causing high taxes and shipping fees. Because the prices of Dutch products became extremely high the colonies stopped buying their goods and the Dutch lost a lot of money. Moreover, the exclusion from Dutch trade meant the farmers often had to sell their goods at artificially low prices. Although, the Dutch had no intention of obeying the Navigation Acts when they still had access to colonial ports. Some English merchants found a loophole in this act. These traders picked up goods, then sailed to other colonial ports, thereby fulfilling the law. To close this loophole, Parliament passed the Navigation Act of 1673. This act established that a plantation duty, a sum of money equal to normal English customs, were to be collected on enumerated goods at various colonial ports. Parliament passed the last part of the Navigation Acts in 1669, the statute tightened enforcement procedures, putting pressure on colonial governors to keep England’s competitors out of their ports. These acts created an illusion of unity. Although, first, the Virgianians revolted, then a few years later political violence swept through Maryland, New York, and Massachusetts Bay, England’s most populous mainland colonies.

In conclusion, both the colonists and the British had a hand in starting the American Revolutionary war. Whether it be, the colonists revolting and protesting against the British, or the British not caring about the wellbeing of their previous neighbors. The British were using the American colonies to make a profit which was causing the colonists to go into debt or become bankrupt.

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